Shine Shine Shine

Product Details

“Over the moon with a metaphysical spin. Heart-tugging…it is struggling to understand the physical realities of life and the nature of what makes us human….Nicely unpredictable…Extraordinary.” —Janet Maslin, The New York Times

When Maxon met Sunny, he was seven years, four months, and eighteen-days old. Or, he was 2693 rotations of the earth old. Maxon was different. Sunny was different. They were different together.

Now, twenty years later, they are married, and Sunny wants, more than anything, to be “normal.” She’s got the housewife thing down perfectly, but Maxon, a genius engineer, is on a NASA mission to the moon, programming robots for a new colony. Once they were two outcasts who found unlikely love in each other: a wondrous, strange relationship formed from urgent desire for connection. But now they’re parents to an autistic son. And Sunny is pregnant again. And her mother is dying in the hospital. Their marriage is on the brink of imploding, and they’re at each other’s throats with blame and fear. What exactly has gone wrong?

Sunny wishes Maxon would turn the rocket around and come straight-the-hell home.

When an accident in space puts the mission in peril, everything Sunny and Maxon have built hangs in the balance. Dark secrets, long-forgotten murders, and a blond wig all come tumbling to the light. And nothing will ever be the same.…

A debut of singular power and intelligence, Shine Shine Shine is a unique love story, an adventure between worlds, and a stunning novel of love, death, and what it means to be human.

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Reviews

Rated 4 out of
5 by
Christa_@_More_Than_Just_ from
Probably better in printI remember last year when Shine Shine Shine came out. It received rave reviews from publications and fellow bloggers and I knew I had to check it out. I was also incredibly intrigued by the myriad of genres that were attached to it. Science Fiction, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Romance, Magical Realism. I’ve seen it described as all of the above. Having now read the book I still don’t know if I can agree with any/all of those but I digress. On to the content of the book itself. Shine Shine Shine is a challenging novel. There’s a lot at play here. I like novels like this. Books that require me to take some time and really think about what I’m reading/listening to. And to question what’s really being said below the surface of the story. I don’t claim to understand everything that’s going on in this book – or even most of it but there were two elements I found especially interesting. Shine Shine Shine focuses on two central figures – Sunny and Maxon. It switches back and forth between two times in their lives. Their present life as a married couple and their time growing up together (from childhood to adolescence to young adults). I loved this juxtaposition of their lives growing up together and their lives post marriage. I found it interesting to watch them grow together, and grow apart and and see how their previous decisions influenced their present life. In addition to their relationship I found that a central focus of Shine Shine Shine is motherhood. Sunny being a mother to Bubber. She’s now pregnant for the second time. She’s forced to make a decision regarding the prolonged car of her mother or pulling the plug. And Maxon’s very complicated relationship with his even more complicated mother. It gives you a lot to think about, looking at motherhood through all these different angles. As you can see Shine Shine Shine was a book that sat heavy in my mind. Both while I was listening to this audiobook and after it was over. Though I felt the the ending was quite abrupt. And I definitely wanted more to the story. I can’t help but admit that this is an incredibly well written narrative. Recommendation: If you like books that are constantly eating away at your thoughts and leave you asking questions you had never considered before, Shine Shine Shine is for you. Notes of the Audio Joshilyn Jackson is a good narrator. I really felt like she was Sunny. Her personality came through loud and clear. But in addition she also able to affect other unique characteristics in Bubber, Maxon, Maxon’s mother… The list goes on. Everyone feels incredibly unique and I never once got one character confused for another. However, despite the quality of the narrator I wouldn’t recommend Shine Shine Shine as an audiobook. Since it shifts from past to present so frequently I found it a little disjointed. Time shifting would’ve been easier to keep straight in print. Maybe it’s just me but I find the little headers with the date/year extremely helpful. This and other reviews at More Than Just Magic (http://morethanjustmagic.org)

Date published: 2013-02-12

Rated 5 out of
5 by
Nicola_Mansfield from
Wow! Wow! Wow!Reason for Reading: I was attracted to this book because of the autistic son. Both my own son and myself are autistic (me: Asperger's) so I am often drawn to books that depict these characters. The book also sounded like it would be "quirky", something I really enjoy. All I can really say about this book is "WOW"! What a beautiful story. Sunny and Maxon share the ultimate love story. This book is about love, the pure and simple kind and how complicated we can make it out to be. What is experienced between Sunny and Maxon is that something kind of wonderful that one can only hope they will get to experience in some small way in one's own life. This is a romance for people who don't read romances. The book also explores autism and Asperger's in all its awesome reality, both its drawbacks and its benefits. We see this way of being from all possible angles, theories and thoughts. I was truly swept away with these characters and in love with both autistics, Bubber and Maxon, as I saw myself and my son in them to certain degrees, while totally relating to them. And yet I also related to Sunny, who has her own difference she must live with who only wants to be "normal" and have her family fit in and *be* "normal" like everyone else. But as she learns, no one is really normal and the most normal of us all usually are faking it on the outside, just trying to fit in like everybody else. An extremely powerful book, with characters who hit your heart and won't easily be forgotten. I rarely read a book and imagine re-reading it, but this is one I *know* I will be rereading a few years down the line!

– More About This Product –

Shine Shine Shine

The following ISBNs are associated with this title:

ISBN - 10: 1427221391

ISBN - 13: 9781427221391

Read from the Book

1 Deep in darkness, there was a tiny light. Inside the light, he floated in a spaceship. It felt cold to him, floating there. Inside his body, he felt the cold of space. He could still look out the round windows of the rocket and see the Earth. He could also see the moon sometimes, coming closer. The Earth rotated slowly and the spaceship moved slowly, relative to the things that were around it. There was nothing he could do now, one way or the other. He was part of a spaceship going to the moon. He wore white paper booties instead of shoes. He wore a jumpsuit instead of underwear. He was only a human, of scant flesh and long bone, eyes clouded, and body breakable. He was off, launched from the Earth, and floating in space. He had been pushed, with force, away. But in his mind, Maxon found himself thinking of home. With his long feet drifting out behind him, he put his hands on each side of the round window, and held on to it. He looked out and down at the Earth. Far away, across the cold miles, the Earth lay boiling in clouds. All the countries of the Earth lay smudged together under that lace of white. Beneath this stormy layer, the cities of this world chugged and burned, connected by roads, connected by wires. Down in Virginia, his wife, Sunny, was walking around, living and breathing. Beside her was his small son. Inside her was his small daughter. He couldn’t see them, but he knew they were there. This is the story of an astronaut who was lost in spa

From the Publisher

&#8220;Over the moon with a metaphysical spin.&#160; Heart-tugging&#8230;it is struggling to understand the physical realities of life and the nature of what makes us human&#8230;.Nicely unpredictable&#8230;Extraordinary.&#8221; &#8212;Janet Maslin, The New York Times

When Maxon met Sunny, he was seven years, four months, and eighteen-days old. Or, he was 2693 rotations of the earth old. Maxon was different. Sunny was different. They were different together.

Now, twenty years later, they are married, and Sunny wants, more than anything, to be &#8220;normal.&#8221; She&#8217;s got the housewife thing down perfectly, but Maxon, a genius engineer, is on a NASA mission to the moon,&#160;programming robots for a new colony.&#160;Once they were&#160;two outcasts who found unlikely love in each other: a wondrous, strange relationship formed from urgent desire for connection. But now they&#8217;re parents to an autistic son. And Sunny is pregnant again. And her mother is dying in the hospital.&#160;Their marriage is&#160;on the brink of imploding, and they&#8217;re at each other&#8217;s throats with blame and fear. What exactly has gone wrong?

Sunny wishes Maxon would turn the rocket around and come straight-the-hell home.

When&#160;an accident in space puts the mission in peril, everything Sunny and Maxon have built hangs in the balance. Dark secrets, long-forgotten murders, and a blond wig all come tumbling to the light. And nothing will ever be the same.&#8230;

A debut of singular power and intelligence, Shine Shine Shine is a unique&#160;love story, an adventure between worlds, and a stunning novel of love, death, and what it means to be human.

About the Author

LYDIA NETZER was born in Detroit and educated in the Midwest. She lives in Virginia with her two home-schooled children and math-making husband. When she isn&#8217;t teaching, reading, or writing her next novel, she plays the guitar in a rock band.&#160;

Editorial Reviews

“Narrator Joshilyn Jackson creates spot-on voices for the characters…But despite these quirky character voices, Jackson never reduces the characters to caricatures. While she conveys all the book’s humor, her reading is also full of empathy, and she brings out the characters’ underlying humanity…This masterful, flawless narration of a imaginative novel is something special and not to be missed.” – Publishers Weekly , starred review “Joshilyn Jackson (a friend of the author) has a perky, girlish voice, which suits Sunny very well and sets the dysfunction expressed by the text in sharp contrast.” – Locus ------------------------------ Praise for the print edition of SHINE SHINE SHINE “Not only entertaining, but nuanced and wise…blending wit and imagination with an oddly mesmerizing, matter-of-fact cadence, Netzer’s debut is a delightfully unique love story and a resounding paean to individuality.”— People (People Pick) “Netzer’s storytelling method is as poetic as her language. She slowly assembles a multitude of pinpoint insights that converge to form a glimmering constellation...a stellar, thought-provoking debut” – The New York Times Book Review “Over the moon with a metaphysical spin. Heart-tugging…it is struggling to understand the physical realities of life and the nature of what makes us human….Nicely unpredictable…Extraordi